


John - Damaged Vocal Cords

by HedwigsTalons



Series: Hedwig's Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, Laryngitis, unable to speak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HedwigsTalons/pseuds/HedwigsTalons
Summary: John is grounded and grumpy - serves him right for ignoring the warning signs
Series: Hedwig's Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956313
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	John - Damaged Vocal Cords

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onereyofstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onereyofstarlight/gifts).



> I'm (very slowly) working through a Bad Things Happen bingo card. This fulfils the prompt of John and Damaged Vocal Cords that was requested by onereyofstarlight.

They say in space no one can hear you scream.

That was certainly true for John, unfortunately no one could hear him on Earth either. He was meant to be The Voice That Answers but he was grounded, failing at his primary objective, dead weight in an organisation that was already operating at stretched capacity. 

He was stuck watching as his brothers headed out, time after time, with Grandma and Eos running operations. It wasn’t fair on any of them. He knew his Grandma was perfectly capable, and Eos was a godsend, but it wasn’t right that the Tracy matriarch was stepping up at all hours of the day or night to do the role that was, by rights, his.

He knew the strain was being felt by the whole family. He couldn’t miss the concern in Virgil’s eyes every time he checked back in with the command desk, checking for signs of fatigue in the woman who would do the role for as long as was needed. His role. 

The even more frustrating was that he wasn’t even ill. Well, he was, but he felt fine, especially now that the cocktail of medicines he was on were taking an effect. He just couldn’t speak. This was more than a minor inconvenience for a communications specialist.

Laryngitis.

Of all the things to render him useless a sore throat just felt so pathetic. All of them had been grounded at various times and for various reasons; broken bones, lacerations, burns. And now he was signed off duty because he couldn’t speak. It felt so insignificant in comparison to the injuries his brothers had sustained.

How many times had he pulled up a brother for pushing through the pain, for ignoring the warning signs that they were reaching their limitations, reminding them that there was only so far they could bend before they would break? Those same brothers had been pulling him up too, commenting on his hoarseness, reacting with concern each time his voice cracked a little over the comms, asking how just when he last took a proper break and stepped away from the comm sphere. He’d brushed it off. They were busy. He was fine.

And then he wasn’t.

He had woken up after a short rest that probably counted as a nap rather than a sleep, tried to speak to Eos and….nothing. Just a rasp and squeak that stabbed at his throat like a red hot lance. A drink of water had done little to restore his voice and the pain of swallowing had shown that this was not likely to pass any time soon. Being rendered speechless was hardly ideal in his line of work.

Eos had been confused by it all, questioning him with that naivety that sometimes resurfaced when she was presented with a new situation. Having to manually input instructions to her felt slow and it hadn’t taken many minutes before he had resorted to typing in a command for her to research American Sign Language. His own ASL was rusty but he could get across what he needed much faster if he wasn’t limited to using one of the control panels. Eos seemed to relish the challenge of interpreting the signs and took great delight in correcting him when he accidentally asked her to prepare the space potato rather than the elevator; a sure sign of just how tired and overworked he was.

In terms of the rest of the family he wasn’t sure who was the worst to deal with; Scott or Virgil. Probably Virgil. Scott's admonishment had been swift and severe and accompanied by an ‘I told you so’ look that would leave lesser mortals quaking. He had been subjected to lectures on work rotation patterns from his eldest sibling that had him rolling his eyes at the hypocrisy but at least, once Scott had said his piece, he was left alone to recover. Virgil, on the other hand, came in regular installments as his throat was checked and doses adjusted. Caring ministrations that he really didn’t need and only made him feel guilty at adding to the already considerable workload of the first responder. Guilt that redoubled when he realised that Virgil had taken over his care so that Grandma had less on her plate, tied up as she was with running dispatch for however long it took him to recover. 

With each passing day he became more grumpy, the call of his ‘bird felt ever stronger as he itched to get back on duty and start pulling his weight again. Unfortunately both Virgil and Grandma were in agreement that he was not to be cleared as medically fit again until every sign of inflammation had gone; a process that could take a couple of weeks judging from the abuse his vocal chords had recently suffered. 

Until then though, at least his ASL was improving, even if some of the signs he directed at tiresome brothers would earn him a clip round the ear from Grandma if she caught him using them.


End file.
